Monday, February 27, 2017

“Everyone
knows a couple like Jack and Grace.He
has looks and wealth; she has charm and elegance.He’s a dedicated attorney who has never lost
a case; she’s a flawless homemaker and a masterful gardener and cook, and she
dotes on her disabled younger sister.[…]You might not want to like
them, but you do,” reads the cover.Jack
and Grace Angel sound like the perfect couple:beautiful, sophisticated, enchanting, gracious.It’s hard not to like them with their perfect
house, their perfect dinner parties, their perfect marriage—except looks can be
deceiving.

Jack
isn’t the affable gentleman he claims to be, neither is he the doting husband
nor the charming romantic who whisked Grace away to Thailand for their
honeymoon; in fact, Grace knows better. She knows what Jack is like when the shades
are pulled and the doors are locked.She
knows what he’s after, like she knows he’ll stop at nothing to get it, even if
it means destroying her in the process.Left with no alternative, Grace knows she has to get out.

In
Behind Closed Doors, B.A. Paris
conjures a breathlessly thrilling and terrifyingly chilling novel.I found it purely by accident when I glanced
through a stack of newly cataloged books—and I was hooked by the first
page.Honestly, I was probably caught a
little earlier than that when I skimmed the jacket cover and discovered an
absolute gem of a review on the back from Publishers
Weekly, which reads:

“Appearances
can be deceiving[.]Terror is
contagious…and impending peril creates a ticking clock that propels this
claustrophobic cat-and-mouse tale toward is grisly, gratifying conclusion.”

It
made the novel sound slightly scandalous, and more than a little
terrifying.I couldn’t wait to dive in.

The
plot is a simple, straightforward affair.At its core, Behind Closed Doors
is a survival story; however, it hinges upon the suspense which the author carefully
builds as she peels back the layers of Grace’s story and reveals the monster
behind Jack’s angelic façade.(See what
I did there, huh?)It’s a psychological
thriller, and it’s a wonderful book.

Personally,
I enjoyed reading Grace’s narrative.She’s an eloquent narrator who evokes quick emotional responses, because
it feels like she could be anyone—a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a
coworker you only have the opportunity to talk with at lunch.Literally, anyone—and it’s so easy to get wrapped up in her story, to feel her
gut-wrenching desperation and her dwindling feelings of hope.She’s a sympathetic character, a victim of terror
and abuse, but she’s not helpless.I
liked that Grace can think for herself, that she can plot and plan, and, more
to the point, that she poised to rescue herself.

Despite
my affection for Grace, I have to say that Behind
Closed Doors made me feel a lot of emotions—and very few of them were
good.If it isn’t obvious from the novel
summary, Grace’s husband, Jack, is not a good person; in fact, he is, as she
characterizes, a monster and I utterly despised him.Even in the first chapter, in which Grace
seems intentionally vague about her relationship with Jack, I had the feeling
that all was not well.There were red
flags that made me perk up, that made me wonder, and I couldn’t help think,
“Something isn’t right here.”

Well,
something definitely isn’t right.

As
the story progressed, things went from bad to worse.Listening to Grace’s story, watching with
appalled fascination as her terrible ordeal unfolded, I couldn’t help feeling
very strongly that Jack needed to die.Honestly, Behind Closed Doors
made me feel very violent, like abnormally
violent.I couldn’t stand Jack—and
it’s all because of an incident with a dog.I mean, don’t get me wrong, I felt so bad for Grace and her sister,
Millie, and the psychological terror they must have endured; however, I was
absolutely heartbroken for the dog.

I
realize something of this nature had to happen to sell the book, so to
speak.It was just one more way of
convincing the reader that Jack is horrible, heartless, depraved and, in a
word, evil.But I just couldn’t handle it.I can’t stand when animals are hurt or killed
in books.My little heart just can’t
take it.Besides which, I have quickly
realized I am not a nice person when
something bad happens to a dog.

I
wished all manner of terrible things on Jack.I even had to skip to the end of the book and find out the conclusion,
so I could reassure myself that I wasn’t setting myself up for complete and
utter devastation.I don’t want to ruin
the ending, so I won’t go into detail, but I will say that the book blurb was
right:Behind Closed Doors has a grisly but oh, so satisfying ending.Truthfully, I don’t believe I’ve ever been so
relieved by the conclusion of a novel.That final chapter was so very, very gratifying—one might even call it
cathartic.

Friday, February 24, 2017

Hugo Marston, head of security for the American
Embassy in Paris and former FBI profiler, receives a call from a librarian
friend at the American Library. Paul Rogers knows that Hugo has an eye for
collectable books and he has an interesting one he thinks Hugo might like.When Hugo goes to purchase the book, he finds
Paul in a locked room, quite dead.It
looks like natural causes, but there’s just something that feels wrong about
the scene.That feeling is magnified
when Hugo discovers a young woman he’d met earlier who is researching an
actress whose papers have been donated to the library—papers which were under
Paul’s care and which someone, or perhaps several someones, seem determined to
keep hidden.

This is my first Hugo Marston book, but it won’t be
my last. For one thing, I really like Hugo.He’s good at what he does—very good, indeed—but he also respects the
abilities of others and works well with them. A good example is Lt. Camille
Lerens, a French policewoman who works out of the serious crimes division: Hugo
may suggest avenues of investigation, but her word is the final decision and he
doesn’t try to undermine her. The same goes for his friends, including
girlfriend Claudia. They come off as competent adults, not just supporting
characters to make Hugo look good.

I also enjoy a good mystery that plays fair with the
reader, and this one did. Having it as a locked room mystery in the grand old
tradition (there are even secret rooms and passages!) was icing on the cake.

Finally, the Paris setting was well done.There’s a sense of place without having the
point belabored.

While I enjoyed this one and recommend it, there
were times when I wished I had started with an earlier book as I had the strong
sense that I would have understood more with some background.Max, for example, is a friend and a good
investigator but I think I would have appreciated his part more had I known
more about him.Lerens apparently has an
extensive back story, explained succinctly but intriguingly at one point, and
Merlyn had a large part to play in a previous book.

I do intend to remedy these gaps in the near future.
Anyone looking for good, solidly plotted mysteries with well-developed,
interesting characters and international settings should find this series to be
a winner.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Nevermore
decided to start with Hidden
Figures:The American Dream and the
Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by
Margot Lee Shetterly.Recently produced
as a movie, Hidden Figures tells the
story of a group of African American women—math teachers with brilliant minds
who were relegated to teaching in the South’s segregated schools—who became
“human computers” during the labor shortages of World War II.They quickly became indispensable with their
incredible mathematical skills, assisting NASA and the Langley Memorial
Aeronautical Laboratory in some of the greatest successes in the space
race.Our reader was excited to pick up
Shetterly’s book.She noted it was easy
to read and fairly interesting; however, she thought Hidden Figures could have used a good editor and a trim.Moreover, she thought the book could have
used a little more detail about the personal lives of these incredible
women.She wanted to learn more about
them personally and their accomplishments, rather than where each woman fit
into the grand scheme of things, and she would have loved to have seen
pictures.

Next,
Nevermore looked at The Lucifer Principle.Written by Howard K. Bloom, The Lucifer Principle is a compelling
psychological study that explores the “intricate relationships among genetics,
human behavior, and culture,” according to the book jacket, “to put forth the
thesis that ‘evil’ is…woven into our most basic biological fabric.”Drawing on years of scholarly research and
delving deep into the darkest parts of human psychology, Bloom creates a book
with depth and a weighty feeling of importance, like Jane Mayer’s Dark Money.Our reader said Bloom’s book was absolutely
fascinating; in fact, she couldn’t put it down.She even bought her own copy, so, as she told her fellow readers, “I
could ponder it.”She highly recommended
it to her fellow members and passed it on to the next interested reader.

Switching
gears, Nevermore shared The Casebook of
the Black Widowers by famed science-fiction writer, Isaac Asimov.A collection of short stories about the Black
Widowers, a group of friends who create and solve mysteries, riddles, and
puzzles, The Casebook of the Black
Widowers proved to be a hit for our reader.He noted that Asimov’s book was “very short, very easy, but very good,”
calling it interesting and charming.Asimov, in conjunction to being a writer, was a professor of
biochemistry and often inserted intriguing tidbits of knowledge into each of
his books, including The Case of the
Black Widowers.Our reader was
especially impressed by the breadth and depth of knowledge possessed by Asimov,
saying he enjoyed how easy it was to learn something new.“You’re learning as you’re reading,” he told
his fellow readers, “but in a very easy [and accessible] way.”

Nevermore
also took a long, hard look at Ayn Rand’s monolithic novel, The Fountainhead.Considered a major classic, The Fountainhead follows Howard Roark as
he makes his way in the world, an architect with unyielding integrity, and
recounts his passionate love affair with the achingly beautiful Dominique
Francon.Initially, our reader picked up
The Fountainhead in the hopes of
learning about Ayn Rand and uncovering why her books have remained classics for
decades; however, she found she was disappointed by the extreme selfishness of
Rand’s protagonists.Objectivism, which
Rand touted, she explained to our fellow readers, appears to involve the
pursuit of one’s own happiness regardless of consequences—and many of the
characters involved in Rand’s novel appear to make decisions based on this
ideal.She also noted it is full of
introspection and individual monologues, giving it the feel of a modernized
Russian novel.“If Tolstoy had lived in
America in the 1920s, I believe he would have written this novel,” she said.

Last,
Nevermore inspected a brand new book by debut author, Teresa Messineo:The
Fire by Night.Jo, an Italian-Irish
girl from Brooklyn, and Kay, a small-town girl from Pennsylvania, first met in
nursing school.They became fast
friends, despite their very different backgrounds, and they quickly grew
inseparable—and then the war came.Now,
Jo is caught in war-torn France with six wounded soldiers in her care and
German soldiers nipping at her heels; Kay is trapped in a Japanese POW camp in
Manila, struggling to protect herself and the patients thrust into her
lap.Our reader was absolutely
fascinated by The Fire by Night.She said Messineo delves deep into history,
carefully reconstructing the details of World War II and bringing the conflict
to life on the page.It’s bittersweet
and tragic, but it’s very, very good,
and our reader can’t wait to hear more from Teresa Messineo.

Monday, February 20, 2017

Elsa
is seven years old; her grandmother is seventy-seven.Elsa is different from most kids—intelligent
and bright and socially awkward, she’s intimidating to most kids her age; her
grandmother is crazy, as she describes, “standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers
crazy.”But they’re the best of
friends.Each night, Elsa and her
grandmother travel to the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, a
place of stories and fairy tales and strange creatures where no one is normal
and everything is different.

However,
when Elsa’s grandmother dies, she leaves behind a series of letters—a string of
apologies to deliver to those she has slighted over the years—and Elsa is
tasked with delivering them.Her
grandmother’s letters eventually lead her throughout her apartment
building.She meets the wurse, a
monstrous creature with a fondness for chocolate and cookies and milk; she
encounters The Monster, the rather terrifying stranger who lives on the next
floor; and she makes the acquaintance of other misfits whom her grandmother
helped, which takes her on an adventure both unexpected and grand.

I
loved reading My Grandmother Asked Me to
Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman.Although it took me a little time to sink into the story, especially
when so many characters became involved, I absolutely loved Backman’s
novel.I enjoyed the authentic—sometimes
explosive, sometimes heartbreaking, but always genuine—emotions in this book; I
enjoyed the sheer oddity of it; I enjoyed the threads of danger and adventure
woven into the story.Moreover, I
enjoyed Backman’s storytelling, recounting the tales of Wolfheart and the Wurse
and all the fairy tales of Miamas.I
even enjoyed Britt Marie (and that’s saying something).

Overall,
I loved reading My Grandmother Asked Me
to Tell You She’s Sorry.I
especially liked the characters:they’re
so different.Each has his or her own
history that changes them, makes them a unique personality—and yet they’re all
tied together by the thread of Elsa’s grandmother.She brings them together in an oddball quest
to deliver letters, to apologize for the wrongs in her life and rectify the
things she can no longer fix.

But
Elsa, I think, was my favorite.She’s a
smart, headstrong little girl.She’s
read the Harry Potter series numerous times, she’s proficient in her
grandmother’s “secret language,” and she’s a frequent purveyor of Wikipedia, an
avid researcher of the mundane and the obscure.She’s such a unique personality, I couldn’t help liking her—and, of
course, her crazy, paintball-gun-wielding grandmother.They give the novel a distinctive flavor that
makes it one-of-a-kind.I couldn’t help
but fall in love.

Admittedly,
I loved the entire thing, even the parts that were difficult to read.

In
his novel, Backman sometimes shows the worst side of people:drugs, alcohol, grief, bullying, social and
behavioral problems, and more—so much more that it will break your heart.He’ll show readers things that are hard to
see; however, he’ll balance these things with unexpected humor and insight and
heartwarming moments of friendship, compassion, and love.I would call his novel bittersweet, because
it so closely mirrors life.

Readers
see the good and the bad, all the difficult sides of human nature, all the
struggles that weigh us down on a daily basis, but he always shows the sweeter
things in life.Like best friends and
wonderful mothers and good stories and loyalty and, wonder of wonders, laughter.Sometimes, life isn’t always good, but this
book makes you feel like things will get better in the end.Grief hurts, but friends and family can help
bear the burden.

Followers

About Me

The BPL Bookblog reviewers include:
Ambrea, who reads widely and who brings a fresh perspective to any review;
Christy H. who often likes a walk on the spooky side;
Kristin, the Eclectic Bibliophile who can help you find the perfect book;
and Jeanne. When we figure out what she does, we'll let you know.
BBL stands for "Bookblog of the Bristol Library." It also stands for "Be Back Later"-- as in, "Be back later, we're reading."